How the DEA keeps its secrets secret

Monday, August 05, 2013 - 01:37

A unit within the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration teaches its agents to cover up their investigations and keep secret the tips they pass along to cops, creating something called parallel construction. Here’s how it works.

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Secretive unit to the Drug Enforcement Administration is training its agents to cover -- how it gets information used to launch investigations. Americans. Technique for concealing information is called parallel construction. Here's how it sometimes works. A truck dealer wants to move narcotics weapons or cash in the United States. Informants or perhaps an undercover agent learns the planes and alerts the secretive DEA unit called the special operations to -- Intelligence could also come from an NSA wiretap. Or electronic intercept it. The special operations division tells local or state police that they need to stop a certain truck at a certain place and time. Local police do that in a way that looks like a routine traffic stop. The drug sniffing dog is brought -- scene. If police find drugs they arrest the drivers -- the case goes to trial cops don't they can never saved -- Intel came from. They're under direct orders to not disclose. Instead they might say the investigation began with a routine traffic stop. Plausible story that creates a new investigative trail they won't be back to the secret source. Adds to parallel construction. What concerns some former prosecutors and judges. Is that by hiding the origin of the investigation that the DA could be hiding evidence from the people rest. This might jeopardize their constitutional right to a fair trial.

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